


I Do What He Does (Just Slower)

by Sidney Sussex (SidneySussex)



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 14:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3573512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidneySussex/pseuds/Sidney%20Sussex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up isn't going exactly the way Steve thought it would. But there's more than one way to skin a cat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Do What He Does (Just Slower)

**Author's Note:**

> **TRIGGER WARNING for discussion of gender issues.**
> 
> _I neither own nor profit from any of these characters; they are the property of Marvel Entertainment, LLC._
> 
> _If you see something that you think ought to be changed or improved, please feel free to let me know, if you'd like. Constructive criticism is always welcome. (And yeah, I totally mix and mash up the comics and the movie 'verse, and play around with timelines a little. Sorry.)_
> 
> _This was written for, and at the request of, my friend Peter._
> 
> _A note: please remember that no two people's opinions on or experiences of being transgender are alike, and this story may or may not reflect the experiences you or people you know have had. I'm not making a point or taking a stand with this story; it's a gift for Peter at his own request, nothing more._

Steve’s six and small for his age and when the kids play Kick the Can in the street, he tries to keep up, but can’t.  He always has to stop after a few minutes and sit on the dusty steps while the other boys run around, up and down the street, dodging around people and under the wheels of carts selling all kinds of exciting things Steve isn’t allowed to ask for because they can’t afford it, they never can.

“I don’t know why you want to run around with those boys and get dirty,” Bucky’s mother always says.  “You could be so pretty, if only you’d–” and that’s when Steve knows it’s time to go, even if he hasn’t quite caught his breath, because he knows what Bucky’s mother is going to say next.

That he shouldn’t be running around with the other boys in the neighbourhood.  That he shouldn’t be wearing Bucky’s old, threadbare clothes (and it’s lucky he’s so much smaller, or else there wouldn’t be any for him to wear).  That he should calm down, behave, sit inside, listen to his mother, listen to Bucky’s mother.  She’s always trying to tell him what to do, but she doesn’t understand.  Steve has to run around with the other boys because that’s what boys do.  He has to wear shorts and get dirty and take off running every time Bucky’s mother tries to get him to act like – like one of Bucky’s sisters – like some kind of  _girl_  – because that’s what boys do.

Steve’s six and small for his age the first time he tries to explain to her, and she laughs at him, shakes her head, but she doesn’t understand.

 

* * *

 

Steve’s nearly nine and in his first fight.  The boy he’s fighting has said something Steve can’t ignore or forgive, and so he’s going at it as hard as he can, small fists flying, breathing hard (there’s an unpleasant wheeze in it somewhere that Steve knows is a problem, but maybe it’s just because there’s blood pouring out of his nose, staining his teeth and salty on his tongue).  He’s smaller, but he cares more about winning and he’s pretty sure that’ll do the trick.

They’re on the ground, Steve’s shirt torn so that his collar hangs half off it, when a voice calls, “Hey!” and then shouts, “ _Hey!”_ It’s Bucky, of course, and the other kids listen to Bucky sometimes, so when he steps in and drags the two of them apart, they both stand there sullenly. “You wanna fight?” Bucky asks the taller boy. “Fight me!” but Bucky’s scrapping prowess is already legendary on their street and at their school, so the other boy just shakes his head and steps back, mumbling something under his breath.  Steve notes with satisfaction that the dirt ground into his school shirt won’t be washing out anytime soon.

“Are you stupid?” Bucky asks, and that Steve can forgive, but then Bucky calls him a dumb Dora, and Steve nearly decks him as well.

“Don’t ever call me that,” he says instead, because he doesn’t want to fight Bucky.  He will if he has to, but he doesn’t want to.

“Why’d you fight him, then?” Bucky asks.  “Only a dumb Dora would do that.”

Steve doesn’t really know the words to say what he wants to say, but it isn’t the  _dumb_  part that’s the problem.  “Just don’t ever call me that.”

“Okay, okay,” Bucky says, hands upraised.  “Maybe try picking on someone your own size next time.”

Steve doesn’t bother telling Bucky he didn’t start it, because Bucky doesn’t understand, either.

 

* * *

 

Six months and dozens of fights later, Steve and Bucky are walking home.  Steve is wearing Bucky’s old clothes again, which means that he’s going to have to go in the back door to their building so that Bucky’s mother doesn’t see him.  She doesn’t mind if he wears Bucky’s things for playing, but she thinks it isn’t right for him to wear them to school.  Their teacher agrees with her, but she’s long since given up on trying to get Steve to come to school wearing anything else.

Today, Steve is mopping up another bloody nose with a handkerchief, because he has plenty of those and not many shirtsleeves.  There’s a swelling already rising under one eye and his hair is a mess, falling out in long strands from under his (Bucky’s old) school cap.

“Why d’you gotta keep doing this?” Bucky wants to know, digging around in his pocket for some peppermints he knows he left in there.  “What’ve you got to fight everyone for?”

“It’s not everyone,” Steve says.  “Just the ones that say stuff.”

“Everyone says stuff,” Bucky says.  “You don’t have to listen to ’em.”

Steve sighs.

“Buck,” he says, “they keep calling me a girl.”

“So what?” Bucky asks.  “You  _are_  a girl.”

“No, you gotta listen,” Steve says.  “I don’t want to fight you, too.”

“I don’t fight girls,” says Bucky.

“I’m not a girl,” says Steve.  “Look, Bucky, do I look like a girl?”

“Well, your hair’s long.”

“I’d cut it if I could.”

“You have dresses.”

“Do you see me wearing ’em?”

“I guess your mom’d know if you were a girl,” Bucky says.  “How come she says you’re a girl if you’re not?”

“It’s just...” says Steve.  “She  _thinks_  I’m a girl, ’cause… you know… but I’m  _not_.  The same way  _you_  know you’re not a girl.”

Bucky shrugs.  “Then why don’t you just say you aren’t?”

“I do,” says Steve.  “That’s why I keep getting into fights.”

“Oh,” says Bucky.  “You could prove it to them.”

“That’s what the fights are for,” says Steve.

“No, I mean,” Bucky leans in close, whispers, “you could show ‘em.  You know…” he gestures at Steve’s school pants, torn and patched over at one knee in Bucky’s mother’s neat stitching.

“Oh,” says Steve, and then, miserably, “I can’t.”

“Why not?” asks Bucky.  “Frankie Thomas did, last week, behind the rain barrel.  And he didn’t even have anything to prove, he just did it for a nickel.”

Steve shakes his head.  “I can’t,” he says again, eyes focused on the sidewalk instead of on his friend.

“Okay.”  Bucky flings his hands out helplessly to either side.  “I guess you’ll just keep fighting, then.  And I guess I’ll help you.”

Steve’s eyes are wide.  “You believe me?”

“Why?  Are you tellin’ tales?”

“No,” says Steve.  “I just figured you wouldn’t.”

“I guess I’d better tell my mom you aren’t a girl,” says Bucky.  “Maybe she’ll stop tryin’ to get you into dresses.”

“No!”  Steve grabs Bucky’s arm.  “You can’t say anything to her.  Or my mom.  Don’t say anything, okay, Buck?”

“Okay, okay,” says Bucky.  “You sure are hard to figure out sometimes, you know?”

“Yeah,” says Steve.  “You’re telling me.”

 

* * *

 

The next time someone says something that makes Steve bristle and his fists clench, Bucky’s there.

“He’s not a girl, you horse’s behind,” says Bucky (because he isn’t allowed to say the real word they heard from the grocer down the street).

“Oh, yeah?” Kenneth Howard sneers.  “Is she your girlfriend, Barnes?”

Bucky rolls his eyes.  “Why, do you want a piece of him?  You like boys, Howard?”

Steve doesn’t get into a fight that day, but Bucky goes home with both eyes blacked and a grin on his face.  Steve’s grinning, too.

 

* * *

 

Everything changes when Steve’s fifteen.

Bucky’s mother says he’s a late bloomer, says it sympathetically like Steve’s supposed to mind, but he’s torn between secret gladness and trying as hard as he can to forget that he’s supposed to bloom at all.  He’s never been what you would call healthy, exactly, but this time it’s okay.  This time, for the first time, it’s working in his favour.

But he can only forget for so long, because late doesn’t mean never, and eventually, Steve blooms.

Well, sort of.  He blooms a little.  He blooms enough to be noticeable, enough to make him want to squirm out of his skin the way he squirmed out of the pinafore dresses Bucky’s mother used to try to put him in when he was little.  Enough to make him wonder if everyone tries to claw their way out of their own bodies the way he wants to every time he remembers it.

And he remembers it more than he wants to, because blooming a little is just enough to start the catcalls, the shouts, the attempts at insults that fail because the thing that’s wrong with Steve is exactly the opposite of the thing they think is wrong.

Bucky doesn’t talk to him for a while.

“I thought you said you weren’t a girl,” he says, when he’s talking to Steve again.  He’s never been able to stay angry at Steve before, but this, Steve thinks, might be different.

“I’m not,” he says.  What else can he say?

Bucky just looks at him.

“I’m not,” he tries.  “I dunno, Buck.  Something’s wrong.”

“With you, you mean?”  Bucky isn’t pulling his punches.  But he’s not wrong, either.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and Bucky tosses him a surprised glance.  He wasn’t expecting Steve to agree.

“What’s wrong with you?  Except for all the stuff I already know about,” hand-waving over asthma, fevers, brittle bones, weak heart, palpitations, it’s a list Steve can recite from memory and that’s only the half of it; there’s a whole lot more they just haven’t written down, and this thing, too, the one they don’t know about.  The one only Bucky knows about.

Steve doesn’t know how to explain it.  He knows what it is, what’s wrong, but he doesn’t know how to say it without sounding like a head case.

He tries anyway.  “You know I’m a boy, Buck,” he says.  “I told you all along.  But I got this,” he gestures to himself, “somehow, and it… just ain’t workin’ for me, Bucky.  It ain’t right.”

“You’re tellin’ me,” Bucky agrees.  “You’re the worst girl I ever saw.”

“That’s what I’m saying–” Steve begins, but Bucky cuts him off with another dismissive wave.

“Yeah, I know, you’re not a girl,” says Bucky.  “Guess it’s pretty obvious, when you think about it.”

A shock of panic runs down Steve’s spine.  Obvious?  It better not be obvious.  It’s okay if Bucky knows – Bucky wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t hurt Steve – but he can’t let on to anyone else.

Steve can handle being the worst girl anyone ever saw, but no one else can know about the rest.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he says, just like he did when they were nine.  “You gotta keep this a secret, okay, Bucky?  Just you and me.”

It’s with new eyes that Bucky looks at him again, like he finally understands why Steve has been telling him to keep it quiet all these years.  It’s easy to tell everyone Steve’s a boy when they’re all kids and no one even really knows the difference anyway.  It’s a lot harder now, when everyone can see… well, what they think they know.

Steve learnt a long time ago that looks aren’t everything.  Today, it’s Bucky who’s the late bloomer.

 

* * *

 

Bucky joins the army.  Of course he does.  He’s always had this idea that it’s his job to stand up for people that can’t stand up for themselves (and Steve, because he can stand up for himself and yet Bucky always seems to be there at his side anyway).  He enlisted at the recruitment office, the real one in Manhattan, not one of the desks that showed up in every church and community hall in the city.  He’s been seventeen for nearly a full day, doesn’t have parental permission (doesn’t tell his mother where he’s going or why), but they take him anyway, because they aren’t asking a lot of questions in this war.  Bucky’s strong and brave and he’s going by choice, so they’re pretty much falling over themselves to stamp his enlistment papers.

Steve goes with him.  He’s never been as strong as Bucky, but he’s just as brave, and he thinks maybe joining the army will work; maybe it’ll make him the kind of man he’s supposed to be, and if it doesn’t, at least he’ll have Bucky there with him.  Bucky knows the truth.

At first, they think Steve wants to be a nurse; then, they think he wants to join the special army corps, the one for women.  He almost walks out in disgust, but it turns out he doesn’t have to, because the doctor takes one look at him and stamps his papers IV-F.

It’s a terrible day from start to finish.  Bucky joins the army and Steve doesn’t, and then they take the bus back to their building and Bucky tells his mother.  Steve doesn’t know which is worse – the fact that he was rejected, or the look on Bucky’s mother’s face when they tell her that Bucky wasn’t.

She looks disappointed in Steve, like he was supposed to stop Bucky from enlisting (as if anyone’s ever been able to stop Bucky from doing what he wanted, although if anyone ever had a chance, it’d be Steve).  It’s a terrible day from start to finish, but even though Steve’s enlistment papers say that Bucky’s going off to war without him, he falls asleep clutching them tightly to his chest, because under the IV-F stamp, in tiny letters, it says,  _Men physically, mentally or morally unfit_ , and one word in that sentence is more important to Steve than any of the others.

 

* * *

 

On the night before Bucky is scheduled to ship out, they go to the Stark Expo together.  Bucky wants a night of fun, of drinking and dancing and doing all the things soldiers are supposed to do before they go off to fight and fumble and fall in the mud.  Steve doesn’t think it’s something to celebrate (Bucky is leaving, and Steve’s been to every recruitment office and desk and tent in the borough, but they won’t take him).  He goes anyway, though, because Bucky’s glee is infectious, even if it does seem like it’s a little too much.  Like maybe Bucky is trying a little too hard.

There’s a recruitment desk in a tent at the Expo.  Why wouldn’t there be?  And, once he’s seen it, Steve knows he has to go in and try again.  He might already have a stack of papers half an inch thick under his mattress (some say IV-F, some don’t, because he doesn’t always make it that far), but the Stark Expo is supposed to be about making the impossible happen, or something like that, and if anything is impossible, it’s this.  He leaves Bucky to take on the dancing, because Bucky can handle two dames at once, and ducks quickly inside the canvas flap of the tent.

They ask him some questions.  The usual ones, how old are you, kid?  (Eighteen.  He isn’t, of course, he’s seventeen the same as Bucky, but when Bucky tells them he’s eighteen, they don’t snort laughter at him like he’s telling a good joke.  They don’t pat him on the head and tell him to come back in five years.  And they sure as hell don’t try to sign him up for nursing.)  What do you want to join the army for?  Can you hold a gun?  Shoot?  Climb?  Run?  Jump?  (No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  But he’ll try if it’s the last thing he does.)

“Wait here,” they say, and his heart sinks.  He’s had to cut and run from one recruiting office already because they were the kind of place that called the police on liars.

“Is there a problem?” he asks, trying to sound more confident than he is.

“Just wait here,” they say, and he does, his pulse pounding in his temples.

And then someone else comes in, a doctor, but not like the other doctors at the other recruitment offices.  This one has an accent (he tells Steve he’s from Queens, but before that, Germany, and Steve tells him he doesn’t care, because this is the first doctor who’s ever given him more than a single dismissive glance and a stamp on his file, IV-F).  He’s got Steve’s file – all of Steve’s files, all five of the times he’s gotten in to see a doctor, and for the second time, Steve nearly runs.  It’s a good thing he doesn’t, though, because this doctor seems to think that five unsuccessful attempts (Steve doesn’t tell him about the ones that never got as far as this) are a mark in his favour.

The doctor’s name is Erskine, and he runs his fingers up Steve’s spine, checking the bony knobs that stick out too far.  He listens to Steve’s lungs with a stethoscope that’s cold on the bare skin of Steve’s back.  He makes Steve stand in front of him with no shirt on, Bucky’s too-big pants belted tight at the waist and hanging off his hips.  He can see everything.  All of Steve’s secrets.

He holds up the folder.  “Steven Rogers,” he reads from it, one eyebrow raised.  “It’s an unusual name for–”

“I’m not a girl,” Steve blurts out before he can stop himself, then freezes.  Is he going to have to run?

Erskine looks at him for a long moment before nodding.  It’s a little stiff, but it’s better than the police, or a IV-F stamp on his papers, so Steve holds his breath and waits.

“Is there a middle name?” Erskine asks.

There isn’t.  Steve’s never thought that far ahead.  He thinks now, though, because he might be going to be a soldier.  What kind of name would a soldier have?  (He considers James for a moment, because after all, Bucky’s not using it.  It doesn’t seem military enough, though, not tough and hardened and capable.  Not the kind of name a soldier would have, and maybe that’s why Bucky doesn’t want it either.)

“Grant,” he says.  He isn’t planning to stand on anyone else’s shoulders to create his military legacy, but if he has to have a little boost to get started, he can’t think of a better choice.

 _Steven “Grant” Rogers_ , his papers say when he leaves the tent, and the stamp on them is I-B.

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s angry at him.

He didn’t say anything about the enlistment papers until after Bucky’s big night out, because he figures it’s Bucky’s night and there are two girls there that are both head over heels for Bucky (one of them was supposed to be dancing with Steve, but he knows he can’t compete and doesn’t mind) and the news can wait a little while.  So he tells Bucky in the morning as they’re walking down the street, Steve in Bucky’s hand-me-downs as usual, Bucky in a crisp new uniform that looks better on him just because it’s on him and it’s like he was made to be in the army.

(Steve remembers about Bucky’s father and thinks maybe he was.)

He’s expecting Bucky to be thrilled for him – congratulate him, maybe, do that dumb punching the air thing he does when he’s really happy.  That’s how he feels about it, but it never occurred to him that Bucky might disagree.

“It’s just…” he says.  “This ain’t just a back-alley fight, Steve.  It’s a war.  You really think you oughta be in the middle of it, with your… you know…”

“With my what?” Steve wants to know.  “With my asthma?  With my heart?”

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles, not quite looking at him.  “That.”

“They knew about all that,” says Steve.  “They wouldn’t have taken me if it wasn’t okay.”

“They didn’t,” says Bucky.  “Five times.”

Steve decides this is not the right time to say it was actually a heck of a lot more than five.  “Yeah, and then they did,” he says.  “Maybe, I dunno, maybe I’m getting better.”

“Or the war’s getting worse,” Bucky observes.  He’s no fool, something Steve forgets at his peril.

“Look, Bucky,” he says.  “I don’t want you going away angry.  It’ll be fine, I swear.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything until they turn the last corner and men (too young) in drab green uniforms (too neatly starched) are milling around in the street, laughing and joking to cover up anything else they might be feeling.

“I’m not angry, Steve,” he says, and it makes Steve pay attention, because Bucky rarely uses his name.  “I’m just worried.  And I’m not goin’ anywhere.  Not for long, anyway.  Don’t go givin’ all my stuff away.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Steve replies, even though he knows Bucky will anyway.

“I know,” Bucky says, and lets himself grin just a little.  “I never do.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a week of boot camp and it isn’t half as bad as Steve was expecting.

Mornings are hospital corners and barracks inspections, cold showers and calisthenics.  Steve’s uniform has to be altered to fit, because he’s small and his back isn’t as straight as it could be, but he tucks the shirttails in and cinches everything down tightly with his belt and it works, mostly.  He wears two pairs of thick socks in his combat boots and still blisters; his hat falls down over his eyes until he pulls a safety pin out of the medical kit and sticks it in the back; but it works.

He takes a lot of flak from the other guys about his size, but he’s almost grateful for it, because this way, they all think it’s just because he’s a coward that he’s showering on his own after everyone else has finished.  That he sleeps in his spare uniform shirt instead of in his skivvies like everyone else.  They think it’s because he’s trying to stay out of their way, duck the comments and occasional knocks that they throw his way, and he lets them think it because he doesn’t know what would happen if they thought anything else.

(On the first day, one of the officers in charge of their training is a woman.  One of the guys in Steve’s platoon makes some comments he shouldn’t have and finds himself in the dirt at her feet before he can even react.  Steve immediately warms to her, but she’s still an officer and he’s still a recruit and even if he weren’t, there are a lot of other reasons not to make friends with her.  Or anything else.)

During the day, there are long runs, obstacle courses, exercises and drills, and all kinds of training.  Steve learns how to hold and shoot more guns than he thinks some of his fellow soldiers should be trusted with.  He learns what to do if the Germans attack over a wall, or out of a trench, or in the woods.  He learns the meaning of pain, and determination, and pain, and ingenuity, and more pain.  He also finds out that boot camp is a terrible place to learn about bravery, honour, integrity, but that’s okay; Steve’s had those all along.

At the end of a week, Erskine calls him into the barracks by himself while everyone else is at the mess hall.  “Steven Rogers,” he says.  “I think you can help us with our problem.  And I think,” he pauses for a sip of schnapps, “I think perhaps we can help you with yours.”

 

* * *

 

It hurts.

More than he’d ever imagined it would, it hurts.

It’s like fire flowing along every vein in his body, like skin peeling itself back from his muscles, like all of his bones are breaking and healing at once.  It feels like torture on the rack and he doesn’t even realize he’s screaming until he hears someone calling his name and someone else shouting to turn off the machine and it takes everything in him to shout, “No!”

It feels like years before he gets the second word out, “Don’t,” and then, “I can do this,” and there’s more pain and more fire and he wonders if this is what it would have felt like if that grenade in the camp had been live.  At least it would’ve been over faster.

It hurts.

 

* * *

 

The treatment gives him height, broad shoulders, muscles.  It takes away some things as well, things that were never right to begin with – his asthma and his brittle bones, his heart complaints and his constant illnesses, and other things, too.

And it doesn’t feel right.

That isn’t exactly true, either.  It feels right when he moves, or when he reaches for something and he’s finally tall enough to grasp it, or when he’s in the shower and there are soap suds on smooth skin that isn’t stretched over the wrong body, the wrong shape, anymore.  It feels right when he isn’t thinking about it and it just slips into the background of his life the way he’s wanted it to since before he can remember.

But it doesn’t feel right when he thinks about it, which is most of the time, because they’ve got him out on display as a perfect specimen, an everyman soldier, Captain America himself – and the thing is, he’s never  _been_  perfect, he doesn’t  _want_  to be perfect.  He doesn’t want to be any different than anyone else, not for any reason and especially not for this one.  It feels like he’s stolen something that should have been his all along, but wasn’t, and if he stands in the limelight too long, someone will notice and take it away again.

 Steve’s never been the type to stand around and look pretty.  That was part of the problem all along; put this on, brush your hair, stand up straight, smile, be graceful (always that, like being graceful was more important than learning to run or jump or fight, more important than being strong or being sturdy, not that he was any of those things).  At least they’re not asking him to do that anymore, but standing around having his picture taken, or marching in place in a spotlight in the middle of a stage is just as bad.  This isn’t what he signed up for.  He wants to be out doing things, like Bucky, like everyone else.  Like everyone who got into the army the first time they tried, without a stack of files with IV-F stamps and a borrowed middle name that Steve’s guessing is his now for keeps.

He’s been raised a good kid, though, if nothing else, and he stays and does his duty like he’s supposed to.  Every few days it’s another show in another state, or they’re in the camps with the real fighting men, trying to raise their spirits a little in the mud and the rain.  Those are the worst days for Steve, because he’s up there with the USO girls (who are lovely ladies, all of them, but he doesn’t belong with them – he’s been trying to say that since he was born) and the men don’t care.  They don’t want to see him, and when they do, they want to know who he thinks he is, skipping out on the real war in his clean red-white-and-blue uniform and shiny boots.

This isn’t the war.

And this isn’t what Steve is here to do.

 

* * *

 

When he hears about the 107th, it’s the excuse he’s been waiting for.  He’s been halfway out the door for weeks now, and that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

After all, he’s a new man, isn’t he?  Muscles he didn’t earn and bravery he can back up for the first time with action; lungs that fill with air and bones that let him stand up straight and tall, a whole foot of height he didn’t have before.

It makes him strong enough to do the things he’s always wanted to do – leave the make-believe war on the bunting-covered stage and really, truly serve his country.  Stand up in the line of duty.  Go out and help all the boys from home who are here, fighting in the rain and snow and mud.  It makes him strong enough to go out when he needs to, when he hears about Bucky’s regiment, lost behind enemy lines.  It makes him strong enough to fight his way through and get to them, and then they all get out together, and they’re alive, and  _that_ , finally, feels right.

That isn’t the best part of it, though.  It’s good, but it isn’t the best part.

Because the best part, Steve thinks, is Bucky’s face when he sees his best friend again.  The thing is, Steve’s been looking forward to it ever since boot camp, ever since they picked him for the program, because he’s been thinking that, finally, Bucky’ll see him the way he’s meant to be seen.  He’s also a little worried that Bucky might not recognize him right away, not after all the ways he’s changed.

He does, though, and he pulls Steve into a bear hug even as the hail of bullets begins, and that’s when Steve realizes that Bucky didn’t need all the changes to see Steve the way he’s meant to be seen.  He didn’t need the shoulders or the muscles or the new jawline, because Bucky has seen him this way all along.

“See,” he tells Bucky.  “I told you not to worry about me.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Bucky.  “I told you, I never do.”


End file.
